Please register online for our free Elmwood Bench Check Bike Ride, co-sponsored by CT Urbanists and Bike West Hartford.
Meet up Thursday June 13th 2024 at 6:30pm at Elmwood Community Center, near the front entrance, located at 1106 New Britain Ave, West hartford. (Ride the Trout Brook Trail for bike-friendly access from the back side of the Community Center). After brief introductions and a safety check, we roll out by 6:40pm. We’ll end at the same location around 8pm, and sunset will be around 8:30pm.
Bring any type of bicycle in good condition, a bike helmet, water bottle, and bring a bike light if you might be riding home at dusk or in the dark.
Our group bike ride is open to all, but recommended only for cyclists who are experienced riding alongside motor vehicles due to the current lack of bike lanes along portions of our route. We will ride on the sidewalk along New Britain Avenue due to the current lack of bike lanes here, which Bike West Hartford pointed out to Town of West Hartford and CT leaders in our June 2023 walk audit, and we continue to work on.
Our ride will be led by Dimitris Koutoumbas, an experienced cyclist and organizer with CT Urbanists, and this is a great opportunity to learn more about the their mission. We’ll be rolling through the Elmwood neighborhood to check on the condition of five benches that CT Urbanists placed at bus stops which previously had no seating: one one the Trout Brook Trail, two along New Britain Avenue, and two along Park Terrace in Hartford. Learn more about their work in “Beyond the Bench: Hartford’s Grassroots Movement for Better Public Transit.”
Also, we’ll explore a portion of the proposed Tri-Point Greenway to connect Hartford-Newington-West Hartford, for which the Town of West Hartford recently received a $100k planning grant from the CT Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP). Learn more about the Tri-Point Greenway concept, supported by the Hartford Liveable Coalition and Bike West Hartford.
Our return trip will take us through Pope Park and Park Terrace, westbound on Capitol Avenue and Boulevard, and south on the Trout Brook Trail.
Explore our 9-mile bike route (opens in RideWithGPS, no account required, and you can download to your device if desired). This route includes a mix of roads without bike lanes, roads with bike lanes, and separated bike paths.